Most businesses get the Shopify hiring decision wrong in one of two ways: they hire too early, paying agency rates for a task they could’ve done themselves in an afternoon with Shopify’s own tools, or they hire too cheaply, saving a few hundred dollars upfront and then paying three times that to have the work redone six months later. Both mistakes stem from the same root cause — entering the hiring process without a clear picture of what you actually need, what it should cost, and what a good working relationship looks like once the contract is signed.

This guide is for founders, marketing leads, and operations managers who are about to hire — or have already hired and gotten burned by — a Shopify developer, Shopify freelancer, or Shopify development agency. It’s not written from the seller’s side. We’re not trying to convince you to hire an agency over a freelancer, or vice versa; we’re trying to give you the same decision framework an experienced Shopify project manager would use internally before recommending a hiring path to a client.

By the end, you’ll know how to define your project scope before you talk to anyone, what a fair price actually looks like in 2026, which interview questions separate a real Shopify specialist from someone who learned Liquid last month, what belongs in your contract, and what to check before you hand over admin access. Let’s start with the basics.

What Does a Shopify Developer Actually Do?

“Shopify developer” is used loosely enough in job posts and freelancer profiles that it’s worth separating what the role actually covers, because your project might only need a slice of it.

●      Theme development — customising or building the front-end a customer sees: product pages, collection layouts, cart drawers, and the overall visual design. This is mostly Liquid (Shopify’s templating language), HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

●      App development — building custom functionality that doesn’t exist in the App Store, using Shopify’s Admin API, GraphQL API, and webhooks. This is closer to traditional software engineering than to theme work.

●      Store setup — the operational side: products, collections, shipping zones, tax settings, payment gateways, and third-party app configuration. This doesn’t always require a developer at all — much of it is admin work any careful person can do.

The line between “developer” and “agency/strategist” is where the work stops being purely technical execution and starts involving decisions about conversion rate, information architecture, or growth strategy. A developer builds what’s specified. An agency or senior consultant often helps you figure out what to specify in the first place. If you already know exactly what you want built, a developer is enough. If you’re not sure what “good” looks like for your store, you need someone who can also advise, not just execute.

Before You Hire: Define Your Shopify Project Requirements

The single biggest predictor of a smooth hiring experience is whether you can hand a prospective developer a clear brief on day one. Vague briefs get vague quotes, and vague quotes are where scope creep and budget overruns start. Work through these five things before you contact anyone:

 Clarify your business goals. 

Are you launching a new store, migrating from another platform, fixing a conversion problem, or scaling an existing store’s back-end capability? “Redesign my product page” and “increase mobile conversion by 20%” produce completely different proposals from the same developer.

 Must-have vs. nice-to-have features. 

List what the store cannot launch without, separately from what would be nice. This single distinction is what prevents scope creep — a developer can quote confidently against a fixed must-have list, whereas an open-ended “and it would be great if…” list invites both bloated quotes and mid-project renegotiation.

Budget and timeline planning. 

Set a realistic range before you talk to anyone, based on the pricing benchmarks — not a wished-for number. Quotes that come in dramatically below your researched range deserve more scrutiny, not celebration.

Required integrations.

ERP, accounting software, email/SMS platforms, loyalty programs, POS, subscription billing — list every system that needs to talk to Shopify. Integration complexity is one of the biggest hidden cost drivers, and it’s the detail most first-time clients forget to mention until mid-project.

Success metrics. 

Decide upfront how you’ll know the project worked — page speed targets, conversion rate, launch date, or a specific feature working end-to-end. Without this, ‘Is the project done?’ becomes a subjective argument instead of a checklist.

This document doesn’t need to be formal. A single page covering these five points is usually enough to get accurate quotes instead of guesses — and it becomes the backbone of your contract’s scope section later.

Do You Actually Need to Hire Someone?

Not every Shopify task justifies a hire. Before spending money, check whether the task is genuinely DIY-able:

Realistically DIY

installing and configuring apps, basic theme customisation through the theme editor, adding products and collections, setting up shipping zones and tax rates, connecting a payment gateway, writing policy pages. Shopify’s own admin and onboarding tools, plus its built-in Sidekick AI assistant, cover most of this without any coding knowledge.

 Usually needs expertise

Custom Liquid section development, API integrations with external systems, performance optimisation beyond basic image compression, checkout customisation (Shopify Plus), and anything involving Shopify Functions or Shopify Scripts migration.

The real cost of attempting a technical task yourself and getting it wrong isn’t just the wasted hours — it’s the downstream cost. A botched migration can mean lost SEO rankings that take months to recover (see the earlier guide on Shopify SEO for specifics on redirect mapping). A misconfigured payment gateway can mean declined transactions during your highest-traffic week. A security misstep in a custom app can expose customer data. If a mistake would be expensive or slow to undo, that’s the signal to hire rather than DIY — not the size of the task itself.

Freelancer vs. Agency: Which One Fits Your Project?

This is the first major fork in the road, and the right answer depends on project shape, not project size alone.

What a freelancer is best at

●      Speed — no account manager layer; you talk directly to the person doing the work.

●      Cost — no agency overhead (project managers, QA staff, office costs) baked into the rate.

●      Small, well-scoped tasks — a theme tweak, a single integration, a performance audit, a bug fix.

What an agency is best at

●      Accountability — a contract with a company, not an individual, with defined escalation paths if something goes wrong.

●      Team breadth — designers, front-end and back-end developers, QA, and project managers working together is useful when a project needs more than one skill set at once.

●      Continuity — if one team member is unavailable, the agency reassigns without stalling the project.

Risk comparison

Freelancers carry single-point-of-failure risk: if they get sick, take another client, or simply disappear, your project stops with no built-in backup. Agencies reduce that risk structurally but add communication layers — requests often route through a project manager rather than straight to the person writing the code, which can slow feedback loops on fast-moving projects.

Cost comparison at each tier

Freelance Shopify developers typically charge $30–$200/hour depending on experience and region, with most experienced theme/app developers landing around $75–$130/hour. Agencies typically charge more per hour — U.S.-based agencies on Clutch average $100–$200/hour — because that rate bundles project management, QA, and design, not just development time. 

For a simple theme customisation or small feature, expect $500–$15,000 regardless of whether you go with a freelancer or an agency; the price gap widens on larger, multi-skill projects, where an agency’s bundled team usually ends up cheaper than assembling the same skill set from several freelancers yourself.

In-House vs. Outsourcing

A full-time in-house Shopify developer in the US typically costs $70,000–$120,000 in salary before benefits, payroll taxes, and equipment — add roughly 25–35% on top of the base salary for the fully loaded cost. That’s before accounting for management time and the risk of paying a full salary during slow periods with no development backlog.

In-house hiring makes financial sense once you have enough ongoing development work to keep one person consistently busy — as a rough industry benchmark, brands doing under $5M to $10M in annual revenue are usually better served by freelancers, a retainer, or an agency than a full-time hire, as there is rarely enough steady engineering work to justify a full-time technical salary. Once a brand scales past this point—or if they run highly customised headless storefronts requiring daily code deployments—transitioning to a dedicated in-house web manager or developer becomes highly cost-effective compared to paying continuous agency retainer rates.

Outsourcing wins even at a larger scale when the work is genuinely project-based (a redesign, a migration, a seasonal push) rather than continuous. A hybrid model — one in-house product/project manager who owns the roadmap, backed by an outsourced development team or agency retainer for execution — is increasingly common for mid-sized brands, since it keeps institutional knowledge in-house while outsourcing the part of the cost structure (developer salaries, benefits, management overhead) that scales worst with a small team.

Types of Shopify Projects and Who You Need for Each

●      New store build — a generalist theme developer or a small agency is usually enough, unless you need custom functionality from day one.

●      Migration (WooCommerce/Magento/Wix → Shopify) — someone experienced specifically in migrations, not just Shopify development; the product data, customer records, order history, and — critically — the 301 redirect mapping for existing SEO rankings all need dedicated attention.

●      Custom app or API integration — an app developer comfortable with the Admin API, GraphQL, webhooks, and (if it’s a public app) Shopify’s App Bridge and billing APIs. This is closer to software engineering than to typical theme work.

●      Theme customisation vs. full custom theme — customising an existing theme (e.g., Dawn) is faster and cheaper; a fully custom theme costs more but removes the constraints of someone else’s template architecture.

●      Ongoing growth/CRO work — someone with commercial fluency, not just technical skill — understanding AOV, conversion funnels, and how a code change connects to revenue, not just whether it renders correctly.

●      Shopify Plus enterprise builds — Implement enterprise-grade Shopify Plus capabilities, including Checkout Extensibility, Shopify Functions, Shopify Flow automations, and native B2B features for scalable, high-volume commerce. 

Skills You Should Actually Look For

Technical

●      Liquid — Shopify’s templating language; the foundation of virtually all theme work.

●      JavaScript — for interactive cart behaviour, AJAX operations, and dynamic front-end features.

●      REST and GraphQL Admin APIs — GraphQL has been the modern standard for several years now; a developer who defaults to REST for everything may be working from outdated knowledge.

●      Theme architecture — understanding of Shopify sections, blocks, and Online Store 2.0 structure, not just editing existing templates.

Platform-specific

●      Shopify Plus — checkout extensibility, Shopify Functions (replacing the now-deprecated Shopify Scripts), Flow automation, Custom integrations, Custom apps, Custom integrations with ERP, CRM, PIM, WMS.

●      B2B configuration — such as company accounts, wholesale pricing, and net payment terms—is now common across businesses on every Shopify plan, although the implementation differs by plan tier.

Non-technical

●      SEO awareness — understanding of Shopify’s URL structure, redirect handling, and how theme decisions affect Core Web Vitals.

●      Page-speed literacy — able to explain, not just claim, how they’ll keep the store fast as apps and features are added.

●      UX/commercial sense — the strongest Shopify developers think in terms of AOV, conversion, and checkout friction, not just whether code compiles.

Red flags in “Shopify expert” claims

Defaulting to REST over GraphQL without a specific reason, an inability to explain the difference between Shopify Scripts and Shopify Functions, and no mention of documentation or handover process are all signs that the “expert” label is self-applied rather than earned. 

Shopify Agency & Freelancer Red Flags

These patterns show up repeatedly across agency post-mortems and Shopify Community threads about hiring gone wrong. Any one of these alone isn’t necessarily disqualifying, but two or more together is a strong signal to keep looking:

Fake or unverifiable portfolios.

A portfolio should include live URLs you can visit, not just screenshots. If a developer can’t point you to a real, currently live store they built, treat every other claim with scepticism.

Unrealistic pricing. 

If a quote comes in at roughly half the regional benchmark for a senior-level scope, one of two things is happening: they’re junior talent using a senior label, or the work will be subcontracted to someone you haven’t vetted. Both end up costing more than the honest quote would have.

 Guaranteed rankings or sales. 

No developer or agency can guarantee Google rankings or a specific sales outcome — too many variables (product-market fit, marketing spend, seasonality) sit outside a developer’s control. This is the same warning covered in Google’s own guidance on third-party SEO claims: treat guarantees as a credibility red flag, not a selling point.

Poor communication before you’ve even signed anything. 

If getting a clear answer during the sales process is difficult, it will not improve once you’re a paying client with less negotiating leverage.

No documentation. 

If the answer to “how do you document your work” is some version of “the code speaks for itself,” you’re signing up to be dependent on that one person indefinitely — the next developer will have to rebuild context from scratch.

No code ownership. 

Any hesitation around giving you full ownership of the code, theme files, or repository access is a hard stop. Some agencies try to retain code as leverage to keep you locked in as a client.

No contract. 

A verbal agreement or a one-line email confirming a price is not a contract. Understand for exactly what needs to be in writing.

Missing post-launch support. 

If a developer goes quiet the moment the store goes live, you’re on your own for the first bug — which is exactly when you’re least equipped to fix it yourself.

What Factors Affect Shopify Development Costs?

Shopify development pricing spans a wide range — roughly $15 to $200+ per hour globally — because several variables stack on top of each other:

Experience level. 

Junior developers (0–2 years) run $15–$50/hour and suit basic theme tweaks. Mid-level developers (2–5 years) run $40–$130/hour for semi-complex builds and custom integrations. Senior/Shopify Plus specialists run $120–$200+/hour for enterprise architecture, headless commerce, and complex checkout work.

Geography. 

North American and Western European developers sit at the top of the range; Eastern European developers offer comparable senior-level execution at roughly 35–55% lower cost; South and Southeast Asian developers run the lowest, often $10–$45/hour, with wider quality variance to check for.

Engagement model. 

Hourly suits evolving scope; fixed-price suits a tightly defined deliverable; retainers ($300–$1,500/month for a small store, into five figures monthly for larger brands) suit ongoing work; milestone-based billing ties payment to defined checkpoints, which is often the safest structure for a first-time engagement with a new provider.

 Project type. 

As a rough planning guide: theme customisation runs $500–$15,000; a fully custom theme build runs $3,000–$25,000+; a custom app runs $5,000–$30,000+; a platform migration runs $5,000–$25,000; a full Shopify Plus enterprise build with B2B, custom checkout, and ERP integration can run $40,000–$150,000+.

Why the cheapest quote is often the most expensive: a quote significantly under market rate usually means one of three things — 

• The scope was misunderstood, and change orders are coming.
• The work will be subcontracted without your knowledge.
• Corners will be cut on testing, documentation, and post-launch support. 

The rework cost of a cheap, wrong build routinely exceeds what a properly scoped quote would have cost the first time.

Where to Find Shopify Developers and Agencies

Shopify Partner Directory

Shopify’s own official directory (which replaced the old Shopify Experts Marketplace in October 2023) is organised into five tiers: 

• Registered (the entry point) 
• Select Partners (small/medium businesses)
• Plus Partners (mid-market and larger)
• Premier Partners (large enterprise)
• Platinum Partners (global enterprise). 

Shopify partners directory has been vetted through Shopify’s own partner tier requirements, including verified skill credentials.

Freelance marketplaces

Upwork and Freelancer.com offer the largest candidate pools at all price points; Toptal screens to roughly the top 3% of applicants, best for complex Shopify Plus or headless work; Storetasker is Shopify-specific with fixed-price task pricing; Fiverr suits small, well-defined tasks starting around $50.

Agency directories

Clutch and GoodFirms list agencies with verified client reviews and published rate bands, useful for larger projects that need a full team rather than one person.

Referrals and community forums

The Shopify Community forum and ecommerce-focused subreddits are where developers and merchants discuss real experiences, including who to avoid, often more candidly than on the platforms where developers are marketing themselves.

To shortlist efficiently without losing weeks: pick no more than 4–5 candidates to seriously evaluate, based on portfolio fit to your specific project type (not general Shopify experience), then run the same structured interview against all of them so responses are genuinely comparable.

Interview Questions to Ask Before Hiring

Technical screening questions

Walk me through how you’d optimise a slow-loading product page.

A strong answer covers image compression and lazy loading, app audit (identifying which installed apps are adding render-blocking scripts), and Liquid-level rendering efficiency — not just “I’d compress the images.”

How do you approach migrating legacy Shopify Scripts to Shopify Functions? 

Shopify completely sunsetted Shopify Scripts on June 30, 2026. Because Scripts no longer run, an experienced developer should have a clear, structured methodology for auditing, rewriting, and testing legacy custom logic using the modern Shopify Functions API.

When would you use GraphQL over REST for the Admin API? 

Listen for an explanation involving reduced over-fetching and better performance at scale — a vague or non-answer here is a real gap for anyone doing serious integration work.

How do you handle a Shopify API rate limit being hit mid-integration? 

Tests real hands-on experience with the API rather than textbook knowledge.

 Describe your experience with Shopify webhooks and a real integration you built with them.

Should produce a specific, concrete example — not a general description of what webhooks are.

Process and communication questions

●      How do you document your work, and can I see an example from a past project?

●      What does your change-request process look like if I ask for something outside the original scope?

●      What’s your typical response time for support requests, and is that written into your contract?

Portfolio and past-project questions

●      Can you show me a live store you built, and what was your specific role in it?

●      Tell me about a project that went wrong and what you did about it. How they answer this is often more revealing than any success story.

Questions that expose inexperience fast

Ask any candidate to explain metafields or the practical difference between a Shopify theme and a Shopify app. These are basic-enough concepts that hesitation or a vague answer here is disqualifying, regardless of how polished the rest of the conversation was.

How to Evaluate a Portfolio or Case Study

A polished-looking store screenshot tells you almost nothing about whether the person you’re hiring actually built it, or how well it performs. Go further:

●      Ask for live URLs, not just images. Visit the actual store. Check load speed, mobile responsiveness, and whether the checkout flow actually works — screenshots hide performance problems.

●      Verify real ownership of past work. Ask specifically what their role was — did they build the whole store, or customise one section of a theme someone else built? Agencies sometimes showcase client logos where their actual contribution was minor.

●      Ask about results, not just deliverables. “We built a custom filtering system” is a deliverable. “That filtering system reduced bounce rate on collection pages by X%” is a result. A developer who can speak to outcomes, not just output, is thinking about your business, not just the ticket.

●      Consider a small paid trial before a large commitment. A short paid test task — a speed audit, a small metafield-driven section, a scoped bug fix — reveals code quality, communication style, and delivery reliability for a fraction of the cost of a bad long-term hire.

Contracts and Scope of Work: What to Get in Writing

●      Scope definition and change-request handling. Reference the requirements document directly in the contract. Define how additions beyond that scope are priced and approved — in writing, before work starts.

●      IP ownership. The contract should explicitly state that you own all code, themes, and custom apps built during the engagement — full work-for-hire language, not a licensing arrangement. Confirm the developer works inside your Shopify account and your GitHub/version-control repository, not one they control and could withhold access to later.

●      Timeline, milestones, and payment schedule. Tie payments to specific, verifiable milestones rather than a flat 50% upfront / 50% on completion split, which gives you little leverage if work stalls partway through.

●      Confidentiality and data-access clauses. An NDA covering customer data and business information, plus explicit terms on what access (admin, financial, customer data) the developer has and for how long.

●      Exit clause / handover terms. What happens if either party wants to end the engagement early — notice period, what gets handed over, and in what state (documented, working, deployed) the work needs to be left?

Common Mistakes Businesses Make When Hiring

●      Hiring on price alone. The cheapest quote is a starting point for questions, not a reason to sign — as we discussed earlier on why underpriced quotes usually cost more in the end.

●      No written scope, only a verbal brief. Verbal agreements are where “I thought that was included” disputes come from. Put the requirements document into the contract itself.

●      Not checking who actually owns the code/store afterwards. Confirm this in writing before work starts, not after a dispute arises.

●      Ignoring post-launch support until it’s urgent. The best time to negotiate support terms is before you’re desperate for a bug fix with zero leverage.

●      Handing over full admin access without safeguards. Use staff accounts with scoped permissions rather than full owner-level access wherever possible, and remove access promptly when an engagement ends.

Shopify Project Timeline: What to Expect

●      Discovery — requirements gathering, technical audit of any existing store, and confirmation of the scope document with the developer or agency.

●      Planning — sitemap/information architecture, integration mapping, and a milestone schedule.

●      Design — wireframes and visual design for custom builds; theme selection and customisation planning for template-based builds.

●      Development — the build itself: theme coding, app integration, and any custom functionality.

●      QA & Testing — cross-device and cross-browser testing, checkout flow testing with real (test-mode) transactions, and integration testing for every connected system.

●      Launch — see the full handover checklist.

Typical timelines: a basic store using a template theme can go live in 1–3 days of active work, though a properly prepared launch (photography, copy, legal pages, SEO basics) realistically takes 2–6 weeks end-to-end even for a simple store. A custom theme build or a platform migration typically runs 4–10 weeks, depending on catalogue size and integration complexity. A full Shopify Plus enterprise build with custom checkout, B2B configuration, and ERP integration commonly runs 3–6 months. These are planning ranges, not guarantees — confirm a specific schedule against your exact scope before signing.

Support and Maintenance: What Happens After Launch

Ongoing maintenance covers Shopify and theme updates, monitoring for broken integrations when a connected app updates its own API, bug fixes, and small iterative improvements. This is different from new feature development, and contracts should be explicit about which bucket a given request falls into.

A basic SLA (service level agreement) should specify response time (how quickly you’ll hear back after reporting an issue), resolution time (how quickly it will actually be fixed, which may reasonably be longer than the response time for non-critical issues), and the scope of what “support” covers — a checkout-breaking bug is not the same priority tier as a minor visual glitch.

Retainer-based maintenance (a fixed monthly fee for a defined number of hours or a defined scope of coverage) suits stores with predictable ongoing needs. Pay-as-you-go suits stores with infrequent, unpredictable issues. The clearest sign a developer or agency will disappear after go-live is if post-launch terms were vague or unaddressed during the sales conversation — this should have been settled before the contract was signed, not raised for the first time when something breaks.

Shopify Launch & Handover Checklist

Before you consider a project complete and the developer’s engagement finished, confirm every item below:

• Code ownership — confirmed in writing per your contract, not just assumed.
• Theme files — you have a full copy/export of the final theme, not just access through the developer’s account.
• Admin access — you hold full owner-level access; any temporary staff/collaborator access granted to the developer is documented and can be revoked on your terms.
• Third-party app access — confirm which accounts (analytics, email platform, reviews app, etc.) are registered under your business’s credentials, not the developer’s personal accounts.
• Documentation — a written record of custom code, integrations, and any non-obvious configuration decisions, so a future developer isn’t starting from zero.
• Analytics setup — GA4 or your chosen analytics tool installed and verified to be tracking correctly before launch, not after.
• SEO checklist — unique title tags and meta descriptions on key pages, redirects mapped for any migrated URLs, and sitemap submitted to Google Search Console.
•  Payment gateway testing — a full test transaction completed end-to-end, including confirmation emails.
• Backups — confirmation of what’s backed up, where, and how to restore it if something goes wrong post-launch.
• Training session — a walkthrough of the admin, key settings, and how to make basic content updates yourself, so you’re not dependent on the developer for every small change.

Real Hiring Scenarios

Solo founder hiring a freelancer for a first store. A single-founder brand with a dozen SKUs and a tight budget hires a mid-level freelancer for a fixed-price theme customisation. The right call here — an agency’s overhead isn’t justified for a well-scoped, single-skill task.

A growing brand hiring an agency for a full migration. A brand doing six figures a month moving off WooCommerce needs redirect mapping, data migration, and integration testing handled by a coordinated team, not a single freelancer juggling every skill area alone. Agency accountability and QA structure earn their premium here.

Enterprise hiring a Shopify Plus partner. A multi-brand retailer needing custom checkout extensibility and native B2B configuration works exclusively with a Plus or Premier-tier Partner Directory agency — this level of work isn’t realistically freelancer territory.

A business that hired wrong — and what it cost them. A common pattern in Shopify Community hiring post-mortems: a store owner hires the cheapest available freelancer for a full custom build, receives undocumented code with no contract specifying ownership, and the freelancer becomes unreachable within weeks of launch. The eventual cost of hiring a second developer to reverse-engineer and fix the undocumented build routinely runs 1.5–2x what a properly scoped, slightly more expensive hire would have cost from the start.

Expert Checklist: Are You Ready to Hire (and Who Should You Hire)?

• I have a one-page requirements document covering goals, must-haves, budget, integrations, and success metrics.
• I’ve decided whether this project is well-scoped and contained (freelancer territory) or multi-skilled and higher-stakes (agency territory).
• I’ve checked my realistic hourly/project budget against the 2026 benchmarks, not just a wished-for number.
•  I’ve shortlisted 4–5 candidates and plan to run the same structured interview with all of them.
•  I’ve checked portfolios for live URLs and verified real ownership of past work, not just screenshots.
•  I have a written contract covering scope, IP ownership, payment milestones, confidentiality, and an exit clause — before any work begins.
•  I’ve agreed on post-launch support terms before signing, not after something breaks.
• I have the full launch and handover checklist ready to run through before considering the project complete.

If you can check most of these, you’re ready to hire with confidence. If several are unchecked, resolve those first — most bad hiring outcomes trace back to a rushed process, not a bad candidate pool.

Final Verdict

Go freelance if your project is well-scoped, contained to one skill area, and budget-sensitive — a theme tweak, a single integration, a focused audit.

Go with an agency if your project spans multiple skills at once, carries higher stakes (a full migration, a Plus-tier build), or you value structural accountability over the lowest possible hourly rate.

Go in-house if you have enough continuous, ongoing Shopify development work to justify a full-time salary. 

Before you commit to any of these paths, revisit the three things that matter most: a clearly defined scope, a budget checked against real 2026 benchmarks, and a written contract that protects your code ownership and sets support expectations before work begins. Get those right, and the rest of the hiring process becomes a matter of comparing well-qualified candidates rather than hoping you picked correctly.

Considering hiring for your Shopify project but want a second opinion on scope or a quote you’ve received? Softhunters offers Shopify development, audits, and project consulting for businesses that want to get the hiring decision right the first time.

Frequently Asked Questions